4 Cycle Fat Loss Solution : Can Carb Cycling Help You Lose Weight?

There is so much confusion around carbs and whether you should or should not consume them while trying to lose weight. As the fascination with a low-carb diet seems to be fading a bit, carb cycling thankfully gaining more popularity – a diet that allows consume the most amount of carbohydrates possible while still making progress towards your weight loss goal.
But before you hop onto the carb cycling bandwagon make sure you know the key facts about this dietary approach.

How Carb Cycling Works

The carb cycling is a nurition program where you alternate high-carb and low-carb days in the effort to lose weight without suffering some of the negative consequences of a stricy low carb diet plan.

The main goal is to force your body into a state where it prefers to burn it’s own body fat for fuel instead of relying on dietary carbohydrates. With this technique your body is never deprived of carbs long enough to slow the metabolism, and is able to get into a catabolic fat burning state on the low carb days. That is, the high carb days act as “boost” days, increasing metabolism, and the low carb days act as “burn” days, when the body is an optimal state to burn fat.

Days of limiting carbohydrate intake lower insulin levels which accelerates the release of fatty acids and increases fat burning. High carb days increase insulin to drive nutrients into muscles and replenish glycogen stores.

The method also aims to fight back and prevent the plateau effect which usually happens to everyone who is trying to lose weight. Whenever you begin a fat burning diet plan, your body gradually, but steadily adapts to your new eating habits by adjusting its metabolism and learns to cope with the same energy demands while burning fewer calories. By constantly changing the quantities of each nutrient, the body is unable to adjust accordingly, allowing you to maneuver around the weight loss plateau to, hopefully, your target weight.

The 4 Cycle Program

There are several popular diets based on this technique and they can really make your life easier doing all counting/boring stuff for you. My choice fell on the straightforward plan designed by Shaun Hadsall (and featured in his e-book 4 Cycle Fat Loss Solution). The method of seven-day-cycle he proposes is very intuitive and settles into the daily routine easily. I liked he incorporates exercises to actively boost your metabolism but there’s also no pressure, you decide when or even if you are ready.

Hadsall has come up with a cycling pattern that tricks your body into burning fat 24/7 by switching between low carb and high carb cycles in a very specific and strategic way. The program is founded on the particular macro-patterning methods, which allow users to consume many carbs and never have to worry about storing them as fat on the body. Instead of forcing individuals in order to significantly decrease their own carbs intake as common in most well-known diet plans, 4 Cycle enables you to take full benefit of the particular metabolic increasing effects of carbs without having dropping to your body fat saving attributes.

These techniques can help users achieve healthy fat loss without the pain and struggling. Next, this program guides customers how they can prime their body in order to strip their persistent fat easier and faster than they possess ever imagined in precisely 7 days. In addition, learners may get the body they want certainty and in less time.

Shaun Hadsall, the author of the program claims you can actually enjoy eating your favorite h carbs without a fear of gaining fat.

The program consists of 4 phases :

Cycle 1: 7 Day Carb Depletion – In this phase you will literally alter your metabolism and reprogram it. The main goal of this cycle is to deplete your carbohydrate reserves and teach your body to use fat for its energy needs.

Cycle 2: Macro-Patterning – When your body is “set up” and ‘prefer’ to burn fat as its fuel, carbs are added back into the diet here to stop your metabolism from slowing down. You’ll also learn how to combine exercise with this phase.

Cycle 3: Accelerated Fat Loss – This nutrition plan is created specifically to overcome pretty much every type of adaptive response which your body keeps you from losing weight.

Cycle 4: Diet Break – During the Diet Break, you’ll intentionally increase carbs and calories from fat even further and balance it with massive energy expenditure through exercise so that you still create calorie deficit – while keeping your metabolism revved.

Pros

The “Macro Patterning” diet methodology, on which this program is heavily based, is a proven diet method that stood the test of time.

Another advantage is the fact that people do not feel limited and inconvenienced with restricting food choices day after day following waking up every morning.

Additionally, users of this guide do not live in a large calorie deficit as well as feeling hungry constantly and they are not covered up fat burning hormone which blocks their bodies through burning fat.

Shaun is a witty and engaging writer, so I guarantee you will read his book to the end even if you choose not to follow the diet.

Cons

Before you can start implementing the techniques, there is some amount of content to read and follow. In addition, there isn’t any magic supplement suggestion in this book so real hard work and dedication will be required to achieve results with this program. It’s not a quick fix.

Shaun has done in-depth research to give final shape to this system and so far, the reviews give a very clear and good picture about it. Good reputation of author, reference to the published studies, appreciation notes by expert nutritionists from all around the world and most importantly the words of appreciation and acknowledgement by the real program users prove that it is a useful program, but if you think you can just sit and let the program work automatically for you, this is not possible as this is not designed to work without making efforts.

Carb cycling is more a lifestyle than a quick fat loss pill or a short cut to your desired dream body, however, if you take action and put in some effort, it can be a “smart fix”. Using carbohydrates in the right way will reprogram the body’s metabolism to remain in a fat burning state all day, even when you are asleep.

How to start

If you want to take things a step further, at link below you can download Shaun’s program with all the bonuses. You will arrive on the page where the author explains in details his approach on carbs and dieting. It is worth a notice that he gives a 60-day money back guarantee – enough time to try if this method is right for you

I’ve done it before. Did it between June and October 2 years ago. Lost ~18 pounds and reduced from ~17% ->12% BF. Boy, I was so happy at the time. I did a bulk this year and I just started a cut on the first of February. Reading comments on the web make me want to carb cycle again.
I’m really not sure why this is working, I think what may be happening though is that on high carb phase my metabolism gets really revved up, so that I am able to lose weight on low carb days. After being carb down for 4-5 days my metabolism slows down and I stop losing, so back to Carb-Up.